Coping With Roaches: Those Hardy Insects Have the Upper Hand

In India, they are revered for their ability to survive. In Hawaii, they are entered in races at charity benefits. In Los Angeles, they are sprayed with poisons and pounded with shoes.

But cockroaches are still flourishing in the City of Angels. Like people and plants, roaches love the good life--warm climate, plenty of moisture and lots of space.

Food is never a problem--they’ll eat anything. Like the paper bags stored in your kitchen. Or the stray hairs in your bathroom.

And once they find a good home, they breed. A single female German cockroach, the small brown species most common in Southern California, can bear 400,000 offspring in a year.

So, who you gonna call?

Arthur Turner hopes you’ll call him. He is president of the P.E.S.T. Machine of L.A. Inc., and he loves to show off the two weapons in his state-of-the-art anti-roach arsenal.

The Zap Trap lures roaches to their death with a powerful aphrodisiac. The Pest Machine poisons the bugs as they engage in a little-known roach ritual: fastidious grooming.

“Roaches are actually very clean insects,” Turner said. “They groom themselves just like a cat would. When dust gets on them, they run their feet and antennae through their mouth parts.”

Turner knows a lot about the 250-million-year-old roach and its quirks, such as its love of small, dark crevices and its razor-sharp senses.

Of the 350 different species worldwide, he reports, seven are found in the United States. Southern California is home to four of those: German, American, brown bandit and Oriental (the shiny-black, inch-long ones that people like to call water bugs).

“Fifty years ago, there were very few cockroaches in Southern California because there were very few dwellings here,” Turner said. “Where man builds, cockroaches abound. And the Southwest is a most conducive environment.”

But roaches thrive anywhere, he added quickly, including Alaska. “The most exotic species live in rain forests. In Madagascar, there are roaches 3 inches long that will hiss at you, because that’s their natural defense mechanism.”

Roaches are probably best known for their hardiness, which has made them a role model in India and a sideshow in Hawaii.

“Indians have almost deified roaches because they think the roach’s quality of perseverance and tenacity is something humans should emulate,” Turner said. “They actually make little brass cockroaches for decoration.”

And at Honolulu’s Blazedale Arena, he said, large roaches with numbers on their backs compete in annual roach races for charity, with a $10,000 car for the winner’s owner.

Mainland Americans aren’t quite that funky. Pest control companies here make a killing in roach eradication house calls. But they’re not killing off enough roaches, Turner insisted, because these bugs don’t die easily.

The most commonly used pesticides, like carbomates and organophosphates, are nerve poisons. When hit directly, a roach will become paralyzed, flip over on its back and die at once.

But in too many cases, Turner said, “their acute sense of smell picks up the chemical odor and they are repelled by it.

“Once you repel a cockroach, you force him to live somewhere else. Maybe he’ll flee the kitchen for the dining room or living room. So you’re really disguising the problem instead of solving it.”

Usually Develop Resistance

Nerve poisons have other drawbacks. Once repelled, roaches usually develop a resistance to the chemicals and pass along that immunity to their offspring, Turner noted.

And, dispensed in large doses, nerve poisons can be toxic to humans.

The safest and best-known cockroach pesticide is boric acid, which acts as a stomach poison with no odor or taste and is less toxic to humans than table salt, Turner said. Unfortunately, boric acid is a white powder that roaches can spot and easily avoid.

Enter the Pest Machine, an invention of Oklahoma City entomologist Richard Parker, founder of a five-state franchise network.

Using a molecular-suspension spray, the Pest Machine applies an invisible film of boric acid dust everywhere that a roach might seek shelter, including such unlikely havens as the insides of telephones and televisions.

“The roach doesn’t really notice the dust until it walks through it,” Turner said. “Then, it starts grooming the dust from its feet and antennae, ingests the poison and dies nose to the ground.”

99%-Plus Eradication

Turner guarantees a 99%-plus eradication after an initial home visit (which can range from $150 to $300) and quarterly follow-ups. And he assures prospective clients that the boric acid dust is completely harmless.

But for people with respiratory ailments, or those who feel squeamish about pesticides in the TV set, Turner brings out the Zap Trap.

The Zap Trap attracts the bugs with a small disc soaked in pheromone, a sort of cockroach musk scent given off when roaches breed or nest together.

The bugs make a beeline for the disc and enter the trap, where a 300-volt electrical current stuns them and they are left to die in a small pool of glue.

Which is not a bad way to go if you’re a cockroach. “They love glue,” Turner said. “It’s 99% protein.”